2010 Census: Hispanic population growth rises as non-Hispanic population growth slows
Reading through the 2010 Census data was an interesting experience. And when I say interesting, I really mean confusing. I’ve never been very good with numbers, and I avoided math classes like the plague in college. But despite my snarly aversion to all things numerical, one fact became glaringly clear in my research: the Latino…
Electric Flash Fiction
By Lyle Rosdahl In lieu of a flash fiction story this week, I’m writing some thoughts about the form and then including a list of books and magazines as introductory material or further reading. Flash fiction is a slippery animal and for that reason it doesn’t really make a good pet. It’s too wild and…
Aveda celebrates Earth Day with runway shows, ‘Walk for Water’
Last Saturday I attended “Catwalk for Water,” a fashion-for-a-cause event sponsored by Aveda. While an annual show, it was particularly exciting as it was a first for San Antonio, thanks to the Aveda Institute at the Pearl Brewery. With emcee Rita Verreos of CBS’s Survivor, “Catwalk for Water” raised funds and awareness for clean water…
School Lunches – USDA Slaps World in the Face
A recent lunch at my son’s school has my ever-weakening faith in the USDA at an all-time low. Seeing the 5-gallon bucket of waste milk always makes me sick. I come from the era where kids were still taught to finish their food, to not waste and not take more than you knew you could…
ARTS San Antonio Presents: The Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2011-03-31 If you’re a person of sophisticated musical taste, you may want to place your backside on a well-upholstered seat before I tell you this: Yo-Yo Ma is in San Antonio. Go ahead and lay all the way back; I can see you feel a little dizzy. It gets better, too.…
Art opening: CAM: Manuel Castillo: The Painting of a Community
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2011-03-31 Manuel “Manny” Castillo began San Anto Cultural Arts and its famed mural project on the Westside over 15 years ago. He was well suited to the task, being an accomplished painter himself. And though he passed away from cancer two years ago at the age of 40, his work has…
First Thursday & Friday
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2011-03-31 Contemporary Art Month may be drawing to a close, but SA’s art scene doesn’t get much sleep ? as evidenced by a crop of shows opening in the Blue Star Arts Complex this week. In Gallery 4, artist Tom Orr offers a preview of the upcoming Texas Biennial with Onagadori.…
The Jazz Market
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2011-03-31 Main Plaza celebrates Jazz Appreciation Month with a free concert series highlighting SA’s diverse jazz scene. Nine performances lead up to the crowning of this year’s “Jazzy King and Queen”: George Prado & Regency Jazz Band (11:30 a.m. Mon, Apr 4), Joan Carroll (5:30 p.m. Mon, Apr 4), John Magaldi…
Don’t pray for Japan. And scrap the car magnets, too
Please stop praying for Japan – they’re not Christian. They’re predominantly Shinto (a religion much like the Jedi from Star Wars, but without the years upon years of knuckle crippling virginity). Now I know you are a sweet person, and that part of Christianity is to love all no matter what (though hundreds of years…
Bread & Roses: Las Tesoros de San Antonio
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2011-03-30 Four legendary Westside cantantes bring it home to the Guadalupe Theater for a free concert with Mariachi Mujer Internacional on Saturday. Co-presented by the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center and Cine Studio San Antonio (who’ll be filming the performance for a forthcoming documentary), Las Tesoros are: Rita “La Calandria” Vidaurri…
Jesus Christ Superstar
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2011-03-30 In another brave undertaking, the Woodlawn Theatre resurrects Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s epochal rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar. Stepping into the weathered sandals is the theater’s executive artistic director, Jonathan Pennington, who not long ago was strutting the same stage in fishnets and heels as The Rocky Horror…
ARTbrella
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2011-03-30 Inspired by the decorated umbrellas seen bobbing through crowds at the King William Fair and Parade (which takes place this year on Sat, Apr 16), the folks at Jump-Start Performance Co. present ARTbrella, a fashion show and silent auction benefiting the non-profit organization’s arts-in-education programs. Even if a tricked-out umbrella…
Jesus Christ Superstar
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2011-03-30 In another brave undertaking, the Woodlawn Theatre resurrects Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s epochal rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar. Stepping into the weathered sandals is the theater’s executive artistic director, Jonathan Pennington, who not long ago was strutting the same stage in fishnets and heels as The Rocky Horror…
Green Day: Awesome as Fuck
Green Day: Awesome as Fuck Label: Reprise Records Release Date: 2011-03-30 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording Green Day’s newest live venture reeks of heard-it-before songs intended to tide fans over until the trio that rose from gutter trash obscurity to arena rock stardom can actually produce something new. While their last live album, Bullet in a…
Los Lonely Boys: Rockpango
Los Lonely Boys: Rockpango Label: Lonely Tones/Playing in Traffic Records Release Date: 2011-03-30 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording The Garza brothers are all about guts, not brains. And that’s a great thing. Rockpango (a word play on huapango, the Veracruz musical style the Boys infuse with Hendrix in the song of the same name), their first…
Band of Heathens: Top Hat Crown & The Clapmasterâ??s Son
Band of Heathens: Top Hat Crown & The Clapmasterâ??s Son Label: BOH Records Release Date: 2011-03-30 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording We all need a little saving sometimes, and that’s just what Bank of Heathens aims to do, especially when singing about whiskey bottles, the Devil’s daughter, and high black water. Imagine rustic roots rock with…
Local review of The Offbeats’ Lights Out in the City
Local review of The Offbeats’ Lights Out in the City Label: Self-released Release Date: 2011-03-30 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording The first full-fledged album by the Offbeats since Standards (2008) required some drastic changes, but the now foursome pulled it off beautifully. Yes, hiring a producer would have helped, at least if said producer told them…
29th Annual Lowrider Festival
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2011-03-30 On Sunday, take a little trip to Camargo Park, where a fleet of “mobile works of art” will compete in more than 40 categories at Centro Cultural Aztlan’s 29th Annual Lowrider Festival. Whether you spend this fun-filled day drooling over pimped-out rides, grooving to the sounds of Ernie Garibay &…
Texas arts and cultural tourism dollars under attack
The Texas Miracle is dead, but the intransigent belief in the low taxes and business-friendly policies that were supposed to save the state from recession lives on. Less than half a year ago, just prior to his reelection, Governor Rick Perry was boasting that Texas still had billions “in reserve.” We now know that massive…
Taste this: Pollo torta from El Tacomiendo taco truck
I’ve been frequenting Artpace’s Taco Friday for over a year now, and I continually salivate over thoughts of the pollo torta from the El Tacomiendo taco truck, wo-manned by the lovely Alma Flores. The torta is about as big as my face (probably bigger, as I have a freakishly small head) and packed full of…
Eggplant famine doesn’t spoil rich experience at Turquoise Grill
Turquoise is a variant of an old French word for jewel of Turkey, presumably since the blue-green stone reached Western Europe from there. Today, inside a modest-looking strip center at the southwest corner of Loop 410 and Fredericksburg, San Antonio’s Turquoise Grill has itself grown into a gem of the Westside these past five years. Though…
Good as Gouda: Cullum’s Attaboy Burgers
After months of anticipation, Cullum’s Attaboy is now out on the town, courtesy of their airstream trailer. The menu is simple: burgers and fries. We went by the trailer a few weeks ago and had a cheddar cheeseburger with bacon and mushrooms and sweet potato fries. Every burger comes with fries, priced around $9 or…
Bruce Auden finalist in the James Beard awards, and Guy Fieri’s ventures in SA to air (possibly)
Bruce Auden, renowned chef at Biga on the Banks and Auden’s Kitchen, is a finalist for best chef in the Southwest in the James Beard Restaurant and Chef Awards. The James Beard awards are the end-all, be-all awards for the culinary industry, and this is Auden’s sixth year to be nominated. For chefs, each region…
Annabelle 2.0: The Fidel Castro of chickens
After a recent wave of raccoon attacks, the last of our egg-laying chickens are dead. Two roosters and a four-year-old post-menopausal hen are all that remain. The desert might be the toughest place on earth to raise chickens. The landscape is dry and open, but the law of the jungle presides just the same. Virtually…
EarthTalk: Fluoride remains a contentious issue more than a decade after San Antonio’s adoption
After an earlier unsuccessful push for public-water fluoridation, San Antonio voters approved a ballot initiative in 2000 making public-water fluoridation the law inside city limits. It was a close vote, with only 52.6 percent voting in favor of the change, for one of the last metropolitan holdouts in the U.S. While Edwards Aquifer water delivered…
Nicolette Good and Melissa Ludwig reach semifinals at songwriter’s competition, and the Current’s Mixx Tape wants your songs
Congrats to Nicolette Good and Melissa Ludwig, two of our city’s best singer-songwriters chosen as two of 25 finalists at Halletsville’s 5th Annual Songwriter Serenade (songwriterserenade.com). The event takes place at the Knights of Columbus Hall in the town of Hallettsville and is emceed by Texas music legend Butch Morgan. The semifinal starts at 6…
April is National Poetry Month; Slam the Town in San Antonio
April is National Poetry Month, and this year even Oprah is getting into the act with a photo-spread of “rising poets” decked out in designer togs in her magazine. Here in SA we got the drop on O and the rest of the country by starting our poetry shindig a few weeks ago at Luminaria.…
The renewed Offbeats are back with a vengeance
If you do it for fun then what does it mean? Boys like me will never hold up Boys like me you never know of But the words that we sing will never go away — From “A Boy Like Me” The Offbeats are my kind of band. “As a band, we have always…
Stellar casting, voices make The Light in the Piazza a sterling San Pedro Playhouse success
I find it hard to believe I’m comparing the gossamer, lilting The Light in the Piazza to the San Pedro Playhouse’s subversive dance fest Altar Boyz, but if one disregards the obvious differences in genre, the productions have similar strengths: small casts, polished performances, and a professional sheen. And with ticket prices at $25 —…
Disappearing Edges, Pop Pistol’s new EP, is nothing but edge
Power pop/electronica trio Pop Pistol is one of San Antonio’s most active and respected bands. But their party Friday night at Jack’s is more than just a CD release party. Disappearing Edges, the EP Pop Pistol is releasing through Texas is Funny Records, is the result of a triple alliance between the group, a local…
Jazz and Minwax: How an Artpace resident came to enshrine an unsung musical legend
Devon Dikeou’s exhibit at Artpace, Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys, features a room paneled with wood, the smell of newly applied Minwax stain still lingers in the air. On one wall are photographs of small brass plaques, engraved with the names of notable jazz musicians like Louie Armstrong, Sarah Vaughan,…
Live & Local: Young Machines at Nightrocker Live
Young Machines could be writen off as another new wave/synth pop group. But the show March 25 at Nightrocker Live revealed that Clay Noah (guitar, vocals) and Joel Diablo (bass, backing vocals) are genre-bending craftsmen. Their music is drenched in the synthy ’80s, all yester-youth melancholy and nostalgia, but their approach recalls the nerdity of…
Best of Flash Fiction, March 2011
This month’s best-of selection is “After Morgan” by Anel I. Flores, which tells a story so well in the space constraint of a flash piece. The narrator’s keen sense of smell quickly twists your stomach in a knot making you realize there’s a lot at stake here. And while the ending is fairly open-ended, you…
Cine File: Chan is Missing and We Jam Econo
Here are two films that at first seem vastly different: Wayne Wang’s debut film Chan is Missing (1982) and a documentary called We Jam Econo (2005) about the California punk band the Minutemen. Though one is a narrative and the other is a documentary, they both tell a story about someone who went missing and…
Ask a Mexican!
Dear Readers: Rather than me punk ustedes with a prank, I give you the cruelest joke of all — ex-congressman and eternal Know Nothing Tom Tancredo! In return for him graciously allowing us to debate in Denver last year, I’ve allowed him to answer two questions of my picking, with no editorial interference from me…
300 in mini-skirts: Girls just want to have war in Sucker Punch
Sucker Punch — a gothic rock ’n’ roll girl-in-peril tale in which the female protagonist finds her sword, mentor, posse, and strength amidst a flea market of bits and pieces influenced by steampunk, psychedelia, war (historically based and imagined), journey myths, and anime — is, at its core, the female version of an action/fantasy film…
Are you ready to ‘friend or follow,’ San Antonio?
Thirty-three eager San Antonio candidates are competing for city council seats in this year’s election. Most of them have been utilizing social media in one form or another to sway voters into their fold and encourage favorable turnout. But what role does internet-based civic engagement play within local candidates’ campaign strategies? In a city that…
Insidious steals, borrows, and scares the hell out of you
Trainspotting the various borrowed horror staples (the big old house, the creepy attic, the eerie rocking horse), Insidious lifts from specific classics (Poltergeist, Psycho, The Haunting), and genre nerds can have a blast with it. Then again, one of the reasons scary movies scare you is that you know what’s coming — or, even better,…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): This is an excellent time to study the book Assholeology: The Science Behind Getting Your Way — and Getting Away with it. In fact, the cosmos would not only look the other way if you acted on the principles described therein; the cosmos is actively encouraging you to be a successful…
Critic’s Pick: Un chien andalou (An Andalusian Dog) and L’Age D’Or (The Age of Gold)
In Mexican cuisine, buñuelos are fried-dough confections drenched in sweet syrup. But syrupy would be the least accurate description of Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel, who, until his death in 1983, was an unsentimental scourge of conventional pieties. As part of the McNay’s “Get Reel” series, two early Buñuel films, Un chien andalou and L’Age d’Or,…
San Antonio beer establishments invited to participate in Beer Week, and San Antonio man feted as beer pioneer
SAN ANTONIAN FETED AS BEER PIONEER San Antonio resident Jack McAuliffe was recognized with a standing ovation by craft brewers gathered in San Francisco on Saturday for his role in pioneering the movement before its time. McAuliffe discussed his experiences along with his daughter Renee DeLuca (an Ohio-based beer blogger) and historian Maureen Ogle on…
Barhopping with Bryan
Esquire Tavern returns from slumber a little longer If you’ve been longing for the only-in-Texas charm once offered by the Esquire Tavern, you might breathe a contented sigh when it reopens Friday. The Esquire’s once 79-foot-long bar top (celebrated as the longest wooden bar in Texas, which could famously accommodate 5,973 longneck bottles of Lone…
Broadway drainage cuts to San Antonio River’s heart, Ivy Taylor shirks Stonewall Democrats, Tea Party at St. Mary’s, and non-violent kids dumped into adult prisons
Broadway drainage cuts to SA River’s heart On Monday night the San Antonio River Oversight Committee tasked with helping guide the greater SA River Improvements Project asked the city to delay a controversial drainage project that has taken a sharp turn since its initial approval in a 2007 bond package. The original project was meant…
Security of South Texas Project debated in the wake of Fukushima nuclear disaster
Decades without a major catastrophe and growing interest in low-carbon energy sources brought the nuclear power industry within grasp of a renaissance in recent years as utilities from San Antonio to China looked to nukes as the solution to energize 21st-century population growth. That momentum halted on March 11, when a 8.9-magnitude earthquake triggered a…
Group sues Texas after documenting foster-care nightmares
By Michael Barajas mbarajas@sacurrent.com Child advocacy group Children’s Rights has filed a civil rights suit against the state, claiming Texas has consigned thousands of children to a long-term foster care system rife with neglect and abuse. The class-action suit filed in a Corpus Christi federal court Tuesday morning charges, among other things, that children in…
Comedia Comida
If you grew up on Saturday Night Live you know that sketch comedy has its ups and downs. Coming up with new material and keeping a solid cast week after week is an enormous task and it’s amazing the show has been able to keep it up all these years. Now imagine trying to do…
Panelists (try to) debate broken immigration system
By Michael Barajas mbarajas@sacurrent.com The sighs, exasperated looks and brief bouts of shouting proved the debate would go nowhere. St. Mary’s University on Monday gathered a five-person panel to debate how to fix the broken U.S. immigration system, and as the other panelists spoke, local Tea Party leader George Rodriguez shook his head at almost…
